Rudyard Kipling

A letter, written by British author Rudyard Kipling in 1895, is up for auction by Anderson Autographs , the Telegraph reported. In it, Kipling confesses to it being "extremely possible" that he "promiscuously" borrowed from the work of others while writing "The Law of the Jungle," which includes his well-loved story "The Jungle Book. " Addressed to an unidentified woman, the short letter, which is signed by Kipling, reads, in its entirety: "I have been absent from home for some days.

In "Pacific Rim," a score-settling Idris Elba demonstrated he has the eye of the tiger. Now he'll show that he has the voice of one as well. The 41-year-old London-born actor is in final negotiations to provide the voice of the fearsome feline Shere Khan in Disney's live-action adaptation of the classic Rudyard Kipling tale "The Jungle Book," according to Deadline Hollywood . Elba, who has earned strong reviews as the leading man in the...

April 2, 2000 | CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS, Christopher Hitchens is the author of "The Elgin Marbles," "Prepared For the Worst" and "Blood, Class, and Nostalgia." He is a columnist for Vanity Fair

"East is east and West is west,", "the white man's burden," "Lest We Forget," "The Road to Mandalay," "the light that failed," "Gunga Din": People often call upon the phraseology and imagery of Rudyard Kipling without being fully aware that they are doing so. Most of the above invocations are imperial or military, but he also gave us Mowgli and Shere Khan and "the great grey-green greasy Limpopo River."

A letter, written by British author Rudyard Kipling in 1895, is up for auction by Anderson Autographs , the Telegraph reported. In it, Kipling confesses to it being "extremely possible" that he "promiscuously" borrowed from the work of others while writing "The Law of the Jungle," which includes his well-loved story "The Jungle Book. " Addressed to an unidentified woman, the short letter, which is signed by Kipling, reads, in its entirety: "I have been absent from home for some days.

Storytelling becomes performance art for kids when Danny Glover and Jack Nicholson get their hands on a couple of Rudyard Kipling tales, as shown on PBS Wednesday night. The special Celebrate Storytelling ... With Danny Glover, airing in prime time, explores the nature of storytelling and demonstrates several methods in which a story can be told--through dance, music and art.

"My Boy Jack," a "Masterpiece Classic" presentation premiering Sunday on PBS, owes its existence to the actor Edward Herrmann having once suggested to the actor David Haig that he resembled Rudyard Kipling. From that slow-germinating seed, Haig eventually wrote a play about Kipling and his son, John, who died in the First World War just after his 18th birthday, and that eventually became this film.

July 28, 2002 | ROBERT F. MOSS, Robert F. Moss is the author of "Rudyard Kipling and the Fiction of Adolescence."

When Mark Twain and Rudyard Kipling both received honorary degrees from Oxford in 1907, the aptness of the pairing went far beyond their internationally famous mustaches. Both pioneered the use of the vernacular, created adolescent adventure stories that have fascinated the adult world ever since and combined popular success with critical adulation.

Under a white mulberry tree, amid the aroma of roasting kebabs, wizened men in coats of many colors stare at chess pieces that might not have moved since Genghis Khan went home. If it's a bustling city of mainframe computers and brain surgeons, Samarkand is also a Tower of Babel exuding mystery, an air of high intrigue from its ancient days as a world capital. At the juncture of crosscurrents washing over Muslim Asia, it is emerging from 70 years as a Soviet backwater.

March 31, 1991 | John Espey, Espey's current book is "Strong Drink, Strong Language," reminiscences beginning with his youth in China

In 1907, no one would have thought it necessary before the end of the century to do more than mention Rudyard Kipling's name in order to gain instant recognition of one of the English-speaking world's most accomplished short-story writers, the author of "Kim," one of the earliest and best novels of Indian life, and the two "Jungle Books." For it was in 1907 that Kipling received the Nobel Prize for Literature. But Kipling always has presented something of a problem to literary historians.

May 2, 2009 | Martin Rubin, Rubin is a critic and the author of "Sarah Gertrude Millin: A South African Life."

When the arch-satirist Nancy Mitford wanted to establish the ridiculousness of Lady Montdore, her megalomaniac character in "Love in a Cold Climate" who had recently returned from India with her husband the viceroy, Mitford had her declaim that they had put India on the map, no one really having heard of it before!

May 2, 2009 | Martin Rubin, Rubin is a critic and the author of "Sarah Gertrude Millin: A South African Life."

When the arch-satirist Nancy Mitford wanted to establish the ridiculousness of Lady Montdore, her megalomaniac character in "Love in a Cold Climate" who had recently returned from India with her husband the viceroy, Mitford had her declaim that they had put India on the map, no one really having heard of it before!

"My Boy Jack," a "Masterpiece Classic" presentation premiering Sunday on PBS, owes its existence to the actor Edward Herrmann having once suggested to the actor David Haig that he resembled Rudyard Kipling. From that slow-germinating seed, Haig eventually wrote a play about Kipling and his son, John, who died in the First World War just after his 18th birthday, and that eventually became this film.

Re "Oh, Kolkata!" Opinion, March 7 It's hard to believe that David Lamb was not being deliberately ironic while complaining about changing the names of cities in Africa and Asia from those imposed by colonial rulers to those chosen by their own citizens. He says that such names "never seem as good a fit as the old ones." They may not conjure up the images of Graham Greene and Rudyard Kipling, or summon up the ambience found in literature, but of whose ambience and literature are we talking?

----- The Jungle Law A Novel Victoria Vinton MacAdam/Cage: 304 pp., $25 IN 1892, with very little money and a pregnant wife, Rudyard Kipling moved to southern Vermont, to an old farmstead near Brattleboro, where he planned (for he was always a dreamer) to build a great house.

July 28, 2002 | ROBERT F. MOSS, Robert F. Moss is the author of "Rudyard Kipling and the Fiction of Adolescence."

When Mark Twain and Rudyard Kipling both received honorary degrees from Oxford in 1907, the aptness of the pairing went far beyond their internationally famous mustaches. Both pioneered the use of the vernacular, created adolescent adventure stories that have fascinated the adult world ever since and combined popular success with critical adulation.

April 2, 2000 | CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS, Christopher Hitchens is the author of "The Elgin Marbles," "Prepared For the Worst" and "Blood, Class, and Nostalgia." He is a columnist for Vanity Fair

"East is east and West is west,", "the white man's burden," "Lest We Forget," "The Road to Mandalay," "the light that failed," "Gunga Din": People often call upon the phraseology and imagery of Rudyard Kipling without being fully aware that they are doing so. Most of the above invocations are imperial or military, but he also gave us Mowgli and Shere Khan and "the great grey-green greasy Limpopo River."

"Kim" by Rudyard Kipling, read by Ben Cross. Listen for Pleasure. Published in 1901, "Kim" is generally regarded as Kipling's most vivid, detailed and sympathetic portrait of life and belief in India. Kim, the orphaned son of an Irish sergeant, is more at home in the bazaars and in Hindustani than in the regiment. His travels with a frail old lama are a grand adventure but also a curiously contemporary spiritual pilgrimage toward self-knowledge.

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, reelected to a third consecutive term and pledging to get on with the job with a sense of "great humility," borrowed a verse from Rudyard Kipling to make her point Friday. During a British Broadcasting Corp.

Rudyard Kipling, who died in 1937, is incontrovertibly one of the most renowned writers of the early 20th century. Paradoxically, despite his name's irrepressible familiarity, he is also among the most eclipsed. There may still be imaginatively wise children who prefer the enchantments of any page of "Just So Stories" (adorned with Kipling's own magical illustrations and whimsical verses) to the crude smatterings of the film cartoons--but Kipling is vastly more than a children's treasure.

A great and glorious thing it is To learn, for seven years or so, The Lord knows what of that and this, Ere reckoned fit to face the foe-- The flying bullet down the Pass, That whistles clear: "All flesh is grass." Three hundred pounds per annum spent On making brain and body meeter For all the murderous intent Comprised in "villanous saltpetre!" And after--ask the Yusufzaies What comes of all our 'ologies.